Michel Houellebecq - Biography

Michel Houellebecq, born on the French island of Réunion on February 26, 1958 and currently based in Ireland and Lanzarote, was named a 'pop star of the single generation' and is one of the most prominent French writers at the turn of the twenty-first century. Michel Houellebecq's novels, which have been translated into more than thirty languages, frequently incite critiques, debates, and even trials. Literary critics have labeled Michel Houellebecq's novels 'vulgar', 'pamphlet literature', and 'pornography'; he has been accused of obscenity, racism, misogyny and islamophobia, but what Michel Houellebecq has in fact undertaken is a fierce criticism of cynical modern society. Michel Houellebecq's style is praised as a blending of Gustave Flaubert, Honoré de Balzac, and Albert Camus, and he has published several collections of poems and novels: H.P.Lovecraft: Contre le monde, contre la vie / H.P.Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life (1991), Rester vivant, methode / To Stay Alive: A method (1991), La poursuite du bonheur / The Pursuit of Happiness (1992), Extension du domaine de la lutte / Whatever (1994), Interventions (1998), Les Particules Élémentaires / Atomised in UK / The Elementary Particles in US (1998), Lanzarote (2000), Plateforme / Platform (2001), La Possibilité d'une île / The Possibility of an Island (2005), Ennemis publics / Public Enemies (2008). Michel Houellebecq has received numerous awards such as the Tristan Tzara Award (1992), Prix de Flore (1996), Prix Novembre (1998), the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (2002), and he was the finalist of the Goncourt Prize (2005).

One of the major events in Michel Houellebecq's life was his abandonment by his parents in early childhood, left to be raised by grandmothers. This fact and the feeling of disgust toward his mother were openly expressed in some of his books. During his studies in agronomy, Michel Houellebecq started a literary review, Karamazov, and started to write and publish poems. One of Michel Houellebecq's main literary influences was the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, and he wrote his first book as Lovecraft's biography. Before gaining fame with his first novel, Extension du domaine de la lutte, he worked as a computer administrator in Paris. According to Michel Houellebecq, the truth is scandalous, and his first novel provoked many. Considered by some to be semi-autobiographical, it offers a study of psychotic depression caused by contemporary society and the extension of capitalistic rules into the realm of sexuality. A novel of darkness and despair, it is also full of humor, putting the blame for the current order of things on the sexual revolution of the 1960s. The novel follows the solitude of Our Hero, who has not had sex for several years, his recollections of Kant and Schopenhauer, nausea, onanism, and conversations with his IT colleague, a disturbed 28-year-old virgin Raphael. Adapted as a play in Danish by Jens Albinus for the Royal Danish Theatre, it was made into a 'Schopenhauerian film' by Philippe Harel in 1999.

Michel Houellebecq's second novel, Les Particules Élémentaires, continued to target consumerism, the liberalism of the West, and sexual freedom, outraging the French Left by claiming that the revolutions of the '60s left society worse off. The narrative includes the themes of molecular biology, history, metaphysics, and popular culture, preserving Michel Houellebecq's singular sense of humor. It focuses on the lives of two half-brothers, Bruno and Michel, who barely know each other. Never having recovered after their hippie mother left them in childhood, they seem devoid of love; Bruno is a high-school teacher who turns into a sex addict, while Michel is an introverted molecular biologist. All their efforts to achieve happiness through marriage, philosophy, or pornography lead to loneliness and frustration. Bruno's end will be in a mental hospital after a failed attempt at seducing one of his students, while Michel's pioneering work in cloning removes love from the process of reproduction. The end of the book confronts us with a new generation of humans who have decided to replace the species by a new genetically modified one, liberated from sexuality, not being able to feel any passion or anything that could get them into the state of destruction or anger. A film version of this novel, directed by the German director Oskar Roehler under the title Elementarteilchen, won the Silver Bear award for best actor at the Berlin Film Festival in 2006.

In Lanzarote, published with a volume of his photographs of this volcanic island, Michel Houellebecq introduced several themes he would further explore in later novels, such as new cult leaders of fringe religions. Rudi, the police inspector from Luxembourg, comes to the island for its holiday market including sun, alcohol and sex, being torn between the possibility of joining a German lesbian couple or the Azraelian sect promising the regeneration of humanity by extraterrestrials. The experience of reading this thought-provoking novel is strengthened by the accompanying photographs, turning it into the experience of reading fragments of a larger story.

A book that earned him a wide reputation was Plateforme, a romance about a middle-aged administrator getting involved in prostitution and sex tourism. The novel's depiction of life and explicit criticism of Islam caused a huge scandal, becoming an object of a moralistic process against its author. Michel Houellebecq was acquitted at the trial of provoking racial hatred, with the explication that the author has a legitimate right to criticize religions. The main character is Michel, a single account manager who prefers mediated and instant pleasures of game shows, movies and pornography. After the death of his father, he uses the inheritance to visit Thailand, where he enjoys the pleasures of local massage parlors. Back in Paris, he decides to get involved with Valerie, a woman he met during his trip, and their sexual activities turn into open exploration of liminal experiences, from S&M to partner-swapping. As a way to help Valerie expand her business of a tourist agent, they found 'Aphrodite', a new agency that will put Michel's philosophy into practice, offering Western tourists unlimited possibility for sexual exploitation of the exotic locals in Third World Countries. Valerie meets her sudden end in one of the resorts after a terrorist attack, a plot that caused much of the public dispute. Nevertheless, what Michel Houellebecq offers here is a particular register of frustrations and fears of present-day humans, being involved in competitive capitalism that causes the inability to relate to each other. The dissent expressed by the underprivileged is more dangerous than the rhetoric of politically correct Westerners. The novel was adapted as a play for the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London by the Carnal Acts theater company in 2004, while its Spanish adaptation premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2006, performed by Companyia Teatre Romea.

Michel Houellebecq's latest novel La Possibilité d'une île develops further the ideas about the future of a human race that has succeeded in achieving eternal life through cloning. Simultaneously, he offers a cynical view toward organized forms of religion through a depiction of the new cult of Elohimites on an island retreat, an organization that financed the cloning itself. The story follows three narratives: Daniel1, situated in the contemporary world, and his clones in the future, Daniel24 and 25. Daniel1 is a middle-aged international superstar, a comedian whose plays and films are created to shock and offend everyone. Nevertheless, he is numb to everything, and we follow him through numerous more or less unsuccessful relationships, while managing to establish a true connection only with a dog, according to Michel Houellebecq, a perfect machine for love. Confronted with his lack of testosterone and creativity, Danliel1 joins the new cult promising immortality. What we read from the reports by his clones, this state is a mixed blessing – bringing permanent continuation of human life in deserted, apocalyptic landscapes, but no sign of happiness. In this future, life is just there. The film with the same title was directed by Michel Houellebecq himself and premiered in September 2008. In his adaptation, Michel Houellebecq took an interesting position from which to tell this story, focusing mainly on the futuristic elements and creating powerful visual material of immense beauty.

Michel Houellebecq's books are loved and hated in equal measure, but due to creating his own platform he manages to escape any of the predictable political positions. His gift is a rare ability to perceive the world with the greatest degree of sensitivity, forcing it to confront its own imperfect image. Using devastating humor, Michel Houellebecq makes his readers laugh at things one is not supposed to laugh at, exposing the hypocrisy of the politically correct world which current humankind had accepted as normal. Astringently honest, he delves into the subjects no one wants to hear about, revealing the other, dark side of the scenery. Accused by many of being a misogynist by portraying women as dead or damaged sexual objects, his critics too easily close their eyes in front of that fact that some women in his universe are actually the ones most emotionally whole, perhaps the only ones actually able to love.